Subtyping of sarcomas based on pathway enrichment scores in bulk and single cell transcriptomes

BACKGROUND: Sarcomas are highly heterogeneous in molecular, pathologic, and clinical features. However, a classification of sarcomas by integrating different types of pathways remains mostly unexplored. METHODS: We performed hierarchical clustering analysis of sarcomas based on the enrichment scores of 14 pathways involved in immune, stromal, DNA damage repair (DDR), and oncogenic signatures in three bulk tumor transcriptome datasets. RESULTS: Consistently in the three datasets, sarcomas were classified into three subtypes: Immune Class (Imm-C), Stromal Class (Str-C), and DDR Class (DDR-C). Imm-C had the strongest anti-tumor immune signatures and the lowest intratumor heterogeneity (ITH); Str-C showed the strongest stromal signatures, the highest genomic stability and global methylation levels, and the lowest proliferation potential; DDR-C had the highest DDR activity, expression of the cell cycle pathway, tumor purity, stemness scores, proliferation potential, and ITH, the most frequent TP53 mutations, and the worst survival. We further validated the stability and reliability of our classification method by analyzing a single cell RNA-Seq (scRNA-seq) dataset. Based on the expression levels of five genes in the pathways of T cell receptor signaling, cell cycle, mismatch repair, focal adhesion, and calcium signaling, we built a linear risk scoring model (ICMScore) for sarcomas. We demonstrated that ICMScore was an adverse prognostic factor for sarcomas and many other cancers. CONCLUSIONS: Our classification method provides novel insights into tumor biology and clinical implications for sarcomas. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12967-022-03248-3.